I really liked it but it seems unfinished; I had to ask my husband if it was over or there was another part? when it ended they were looking for the the mother and her son in a field or someplace; and we had to do research to find out if there really was a conspiracy to replace Charles (II?) with James.

When it comes to bringing historical events to the screen there are a couple of options, one is to make it a total documentary, this is not what you are going to get with this series, you are going to gets some good actors that could have had a little better direction portray what happened during the great fire of London in 1666 and some of the events that happened during the 4 days that the fire burned uncontrolled though the streets of the city and what happened to some of the people that were close to the fire. It attempts to put some faces to the story and help the viewer understand the events of the time that lead up to other tragedies that were occurring at the same time. The struggle for the religious hearts of the people and the fear of foreigners, the depths that some people had to go to just to survive and the lack of caring that some people had for their neighbors and then how in some of the bleakest circumstances the people you least expect end up helping someone else just out of kindness. Is it all true and accurate? Probably not, however it is a decent way to spend 3 hours.

This is drama by numbers.A great idea for a script but unfortunately the writing, the directing and most of the acting fails to deliver. There is one character in particular (Hannah)that had I been there I would have thrown her ON To the fire. Constantly whining and nagging and the poor actress was so miscast as a 13 year-old - maybe her agent misheard and thought it was for a 30 year old!The cast contains some quality actors particularly Daniel Mays and Charles Dance but they are directed so badly that at one point I really thought Dance was going to twirl his moustache and utter "Mou-ha-hah". Mays also fails to deliver anything much more than a caricature of Pepys and in the first episode the whinging boatman (read cab driver for modern day equivalent) is so clichéd that I thought he was going to say "You know 'oo I 'ad in the back of my boat the other day?"Indeed the only actor who showed any depth was Rose Leslie as the sister-in-law but think in future years she may be embarrassed to have this one on her CV.ITV dramas have shown a massive improvement in quality in recent years but sadly this does not fall into that category and is more typical of their output that graced our screens in the late 1990s and early noughties. It is more suited to soap opera than serious drama and is an opportunity missed.

I thought this was very badly written, and not worth watching. Every one in it has been so badly flawed as to be unbelievable. Not a fan I am afraid. The cast were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ears. It seemed more a script more suited to Eastendfers, another program which I cannot be bothered to watch. No celebration of how well organized the society must have been that only 6 people perished. We think of our society as being so enlightened and modern, but I doubt that the outcome of a fire in London today of such magnitude would be so well managed with so little loss of life. There was an opportunity here to show the courage and fantastic organisation skills of our ancestors, instead we get 2nd rate intrigues and the baseness of human frailties which are not entertainng to watch, much admit to. And, quite honestly, not something that is often common in these sorts of situations. Pitifully bad storyline, which had the potential to be good.